This week's blog is dedicated to my friend, Kathy, who retired this week! Congratulations and welcome to the club!
Our final South American adventure to Brazil started with a few days in Bogota, Colombia. To be honest, I was not thrilled with the thought of going to three of the top 30 most populated cities in the world all in one trip (Sao Paolo, Rio, Bogota). However, Bill made the solid argument that we could not be in Colombia for over a year and not visit the capital city. So, we voted to tack Bogota onto the beginning of the Brazil trip to check that box. The rainy season has begun in Colombia and we experienced first hand what boarding an airplane in Cartegena during rainy season entails. The Cartagena airport does not have companionways to board airplanes. Like most smaller airports, you walk out to the plane on the tarmac and walk up the steps. This trip was our first encounter boarding in the rain. First, we lined up under the covered walkway. Then, they handed out umbrellas ten at a time for people to walk to the plane and up the stairs. At that point, an employee who was waiting at the top of the stairs would collect the 10 umbrellas and run them down the stairs and back across the tarmac to those of us waiting in line. Luckily, we had our own umbrellas so that seemed to be the ticket to speed up the process as we were allowed to pass others in the line…of course, we still had to wait for everyone else so it did not really help too much! Once we were seated, we settled in for the short flight to Bogota. At one point, I felt something move by my feet and when I looked down, there was a dog wandering under the seats. Gotta love Colombia! I had pictured Bogota being crowded, dirty and full of swarthy characters. To my surprise, Bogota was none of those things except crowded. However, once we got settled into our little corner of the city, we found the Colombians in Bogota to be just as nice as they have been throughout the country. Once we had checked into the hotel, we went in search of dinner. We found a barbeque restaurant hidden in a small food court and were pleasantly surprised with the ribs! In the past, the ribs we have found outside of the southern US have been tough but these were fall off the bone good! As we wandered past all the modern stores and restaurants, we felt as safe as we do in any big city. Be smart and do not flash cash or jewelry….those are our words of wisdom. The public transportation system in Bogota was a sight to see! They did not yet have a subway system so it was all buses. They built these huge structured walkways that crossed over the freeways and hordes of people would walk along them to get to their desired bus stop. We have been in cities all over the world but we have never seen anything quite as complex as these walkways. One bus station often had eight different walkways branching out from it. Needless to say, we did not attempt to figure out the bus situation during our trip! We also got a chuckle on the Bogota solution for keeping homeless people out of certain areas. Under all the bridges and overpasses, they had placed huge, pointy rocks so no one could comfortably walk much less sleep in those areas! The next day, we hired a tour guide to take us out of town to the Salt Cathedral. The Salt Cathedral had historically been an active salt mine. When the mine was closed, the miners stayed on and constructed an amazing underground cathedral made of salt. The original cathedral was closed due to structural concerns but more miners started to rebuild the cathedral in the 1970s and now it is one of Bogota’s main tourist attractions. Upon entering the mine, we walked along the old tunnels until we reached the first pieces of artwork done by the miners. The pinnacle of the tour was the cathedral which was in a huge cavern followed by the underground shopping mall! Can’t have a tourist attraction without a shopping mall! After the cathedral, our guide asked if we would like to have a “traditional, farm meal” for lunch. Loving traditional, farm meals as we do, we eagerly said yes. As we pulled up to the biggest tourist trap restaurant we had ever seen, we decided something had been lost in translation. The restaurant looked like a Cracker Barrel and a Hard Rock Café had triplets. It was insane. Never fear…our waiter told us they were getting ready to open a location in Miami so perhaps the insanity will arrive in your area someday! To top off the tourist experience, we suddenly had a woman dressed as British royalty and two men in costume playing drum and fife show up at our table singing some opera song in Spanish. When she finished, she crowned us king and queen and gave us royal sashes to complete the show. The entire experience was so discombobulated and made no sense at all that we found ourselves still laughing days later! We were not sure what could top lunch but several years ago, on the Amazing Race, we had seen the contestants play a game that was invented in Bogota….Tejo. Tejo is basically corn hole but instead of calmly throwing soft bean bags at a hole, you throw rocks at a target that explodes! We arrived at the Tejo place, got a quick lesson on how to play (completely in Spanish) and took on the challenge! Over the years, Bill and I have played many competitive sports (mostly miniature golf) and the score is at least 20 to 0 in Bill’s favor. Well not tonight! Evidently if you give me a target that explodes, I am going to hit that thing! The most challenging part of the game was retrieving the rocks that had been embedded into the surrounding clay board. Bill had to use a crowbar device to pry them out….that’s probably why I won….I had more time to aim! Our final day in Bogota was spent sight seeing in the historic part of the city. There was the usual square and cathedral but Bogota had an unusual cathedral that looked like a candy cane on the inside. The entire sanctuary was red and white stripes. Quite odd! We went to an art museum that was housed in an old church and finished the day at the gold museum. This gold museum had the most native relics we had seen in South America so we figured the natives must have hidden them when the Spanish arrived. Overall, Bogota was a pleasant surprise and I am glad we took the time to visit. Next stop, Sao Paolo, Brazil…population 21,650,000 people….yikes!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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